


power

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [5]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dirty Talk, F/M, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Set within 2x08. Beth considers her relationship and history with money and power. After failing to steal her money back, she ends up at Rio's bar. This is part 5 of the Little Gifts series, but relies so heavily on canon that it could be read alone so long as you know Part 1 has Beth drunk dial Rio "post business hours" after midnight.---“Where are you?” he asks again. Does he know? Somehow, he always seems to know.“Just some bar,” Beth fibs.“You out with your girls?” he asks.“No.” She looks in the mirror and starts adjusting her hair, just for something to do with her hands.“You out on a date?” he asks.Beth laughs. “Uh, no,” she says. “Why would you think that?”“Midnight. Bar,” he says matter-of-factly. “You, having that dumbass husband you got.” He pauses, then says, “You, lookin’ like you do.”





	power

Beth’s not completely irrational. Although she’d argued (and still hopes) the young thieves were just dumb kids tempted by how easy it was to swindle Dean, Rio had made some good points about the possibility of them returning, so she calls up Annie and asks if her if she can store some things at her place.

A few hours later, Beth and Annie lug a heavy crate of Nana’s china up the stairs to Annie’s apartment for storage. Turns out there’s not a lot of storage space, however, because Annie still has all the Vitamixes stuffed in her closet. 

Beth throws her hands up. “Seriously?”

“I know. I reported ‘em stolen for the insurance money, though,” Annie says.

“Why don’t you just have a yard sale?” Beth suggests. She enjoys a good yard sale: hosting or shopping, Beth loves them both. She’s both good at keeping firm on her prices as well as haggling other people for a bargain. 

Honestly? As pathetic as it sounds, before falling in with Rio, a good yard sale was the most power Beth had ever truly had over money. 

When she’d worked fast food as a teenager, she told her friends it was for gas money and clothes, but it wasreally all for rent. When her dad walked out and her mom did nothing but sleep in, the Marks women were on the verge of eviction from their shitty little apartment.

Making money didn’t feel empowering then—it felt suffocating, a weight on Beth that she should have never had to shoulder. Dean had no idea how crushing that instability had felt, which was why he couldn’t possibly understand why Beth felt like she was drowning when she’d learned the extent of their financial woes. When they were on the verge of losing _everything,_ Dean’s reaction had been to stick his head in the sand. Nothing so horrible had ever been so close to touching him, so he didn’t believe it _could_ touch him. Beth knew better.

Part of the attraction Beth had to Dean early on, when they were really just still kids, was his stability. Dean’s parents were still married, and he had a ready-made career waiting for him upon graduation. It wasn’t that Beth didn't have dreams for herself, but when Dean offered her a reprieve from working, to Beth it felt like someone, _finally,_ was willing to take care of her—and this was something she had never, ever had. Dean had made the money, paid the bills, kept the budget. Beth didn’t want for anything, but she didn’t want much. 

Later, after the kids were born and they settled into suburbia, when Beth’s social circle expanded to other moms and wives, Dean desired that she fit in with their pearls and their pumps. Dean had provided these things graciously. But Beth learned quickly that he liked providing these things as _gifts_ —he grew sullen and silent whenever he discovered that Beth had purchased something without preapproval, so she’d stopped doing it. The debit card she’d kept tucked in her wallet that was linked to his account paid for groceries, gas, and whatever the kids needed, mostly. Beth hadn’t had any _power_ over money then. 

She’d never even negotiated down a major purchase, such as a car. When she got her first—her own, not her mother’s car, which she had driven until it broke down beyond repair—Dean had offered to go shopping with her as her “own personal expert.” First, he’d tried to convince her to buy an ugly, old Mustang, way out of her budget.

“Yeah, but, you can like, finance it, babe,” he’d said, sliding his hands over the orange flames which decorated the hood. “You can use the money you have right now as a downpayment.”

Beth had refused, much to his chagrin. Not only did he not realize she would never drive something like that, he had no idea that she could never in a million years get a cosigner on a loan. He was oblivious to how hard Beth had needed to pinch and pinch and pinch to set aside every dollar she could spare. It wasn’t until much later, until after high school, that she finally confided in him and told her about her family's financial situation, which had filled her with so much shame and embarrassment that she'd never told anybody else up until that point except Ruby. Dean had comforted her, promising that she would never have to worry about those kinds of problems again. 

Beth tried to smooth over his disappointment about the Mustang by emphasizing that she needed something practical and reliable. Beth got excited when she found an old, simple, silver sedan on the same lot with decent gas mileage and—bonus—fairly new tires on it. She had just enough money for it. She was over the moon, but Dean wasn’t. It wasn't a _cool_ car; it offered her (and by extension, him) no status. He pointed out all its flaws, trying to dissuade her. 

When he failed, he switched gears and offered to negotiate the sale, trying to impress her. Beth said that since it was in her budget, she could just buy it outright, but Dean said no, let him get it down even more—then she’d have some money left over. This was tempting. Beth never had any money left over for anything, so she had said yes. 

Dean had lowballed them and stood firm, insisting that was all the money they’d had. He promised to walk out if they wouldn’t meet their offer. God, that had felt so diminishing—she’d worked so hard to save up that money, and he was making her look cheap, like she was waltzing in and demanding an unfair price. The salesman had given them a wry little smile, looking down on these two seventeen-year-old playing at house. He told them he’d run it by his manager. Beth’s stomach had sunk, but Dean had looked smug and confident. 

“This _always_ works, Bethie,” he’d said. “They would rather make a guaranteed sale right now than risk keeping it on the lot for longer. It’s already been here for _six days_.” Dean had really believed every boastful tale his father had spun about his own lot, about how quickly and smoothly he could move cars. Six days was nothing, Beth was pretty sure, but Dean told her not to talk about things she didn’t know. 

Of course, the salesman had refused, and of course, Dean, pride wounded, had made them leave. Beth was humiliated. Dean ended up taking her down to his dad’s lot, where she was too embarrassed to haggle, so she bought something much less reliable for much more money. Mr. Boland was kind, but he was all about the bottom line, so he’d offered her no discounts. If she was going to be a sucker and pay the sticker price, well, all the better for him. 

Beth should have known then that Dean had absolutely no head for this business. 

Every vehicle she’d owned after that had been picked out for her by Dean; she’d never been consulted about make, model, or even color. Once she wasn’t even consulted at all. One Valentine’s Day she just woke up and the SUV she had loved was gone, replaced by a van that she had to pretend to love. Dean had been so proud of himself. He felt like one of those husbands from the TV commercials; he’d even put a big bow on it and everything. Beth would've been happy with some flowers. 

So yes: Beth loved a good yard sale. She had learned the hard way the value of things. Holding firm on her sticker prices (which were _fair_ ), bargaining something down for five dollars off... At one time, these things had been a thrill for her—a sense of accomplishment, even.

Meeting Rio, though… The circumstances were insane, she knew it, but when she’d dropped those pearls (a gift from Dean to make up for a nasty fight where he’d called her a leech) on that doorknob, it had felt like she was coming up for air after having been drowning in the deep. She was still coughing up the water Dean had forced into her mouth, but being part of Rio’s business, having some power over money for the first time in her life?

It felt like getting oxygen pumped straight into her lungs. 

–--

“So, how do we get our dough back?” Annie asks. 

“They’re children,” Beth says, echoing Rio. “We set limits.”

They meet PJ and Tobin (what names, Beth thinks) in a cafe of their choosing. PJ begs for a cake pop, and Beth relents. They really are children.

Beth and Annie try to scare them by talking about charges and prison time until Beth pulls back and offers to forgive them if they just give them back her money. She asks politely, smiling.

“Where do I know you from?” PJ asks, pointing his cake pop at Beth. 

“Yeah, she looks super familiar,” Tobin agrees.

“Right?” PJ asks. “Like, it’s killing me!”

“Do you work at the vape shop down on Cass?” Tobin asks, squinting at her.

“No,” she says, giving them a peeved look. Yeah, she’s a drug dealer, but she has standards.

A thought bursts into PJ’s head and he announces, “Dude, it’s the car chick!” 

And suddenly everything goes south: the boys, instead of looking contrite and offering their sincerest apologies, demand a _car._

_Oh my god,_ Beth thinks. She will never tell Rio about this.

“Excuse me, no one’s getting a car,” Annie says, reaching her hand out to put a stop to the absurdity.

“Can I get another cake pop?” PJ asks, and Beth almost reprimands him for not even finishing his first one.

Beth escalates, threatening to turn them into the police, and that’s when the boys start looking smug. Beth has a sinking feeling—Rio told her they had figured out what she does, and now she knows they’re going to use it against her. She steels herself for this, remembering to breathe. They don’t have any _evidence_ —she could just be one of those crazy people that doesn’t trust banks. There's technically nothing illegal about digging a dozen holes in your backyard and burying your entire net worth, right?

But then Tobin pulls out his phone and hits play on some recording.

Dean’s voice comes out of the speaker, desperate and pathetic:

_“Can you guys kill him or not? I need this to be over. I’ll pay whatever.”_

_“Fifty percent down,”_ one of the boys says in the recording. _“The rest after we dust him.”_

_“Deal.”_

Dean’s lie to her, that he’d just hired these kids to scare Rio, settles over Beth like a shawl. Beth feels like she’s having an out-of-body experience. Her vision goes blurry at the corner of her eyes and she feels like she’s back underwater, held down by Dean’s hand. She’s drowning.

But she’s smarter than they think she is. 

“We’ll give you a car,” she agrees. “Fully loaded.”

-–-

Beth and Annie load up the “stolen” Vitamixes into an orange charger, give PJ and Tobin the drop location and time, and wait to hear that Ruby has given the wrong information to Turner.

Ruby reports she did, but Beth has her doubts.

She’s still processing Dean hiring _hitmen_ , and she’s furious at his imbecility. In the back of her mind, though, she’s relieved that he’s so goddamned dumb. He’s lucky he hired two conniving schemers that merely robbed them—had they been actual murderers, Beth’s certain that Dean would already have a bullet through his thick skull.

Still, though. He was wound up enough, frustrated enough to want Rio _dead_ , to pay for Rio's murder. Beth hadn’t even been able to allow Rio to go after Boomer the rapist or Mary Pat the extortionist—people that were actually pressing threats. And here Dean was, making this decision seemingly impulsively, seemingly easily? No remorse, no regrets, covering it all up with a flimsy lie? The thought gives Beth shivers. She both finds this version of Dean more threatening than she has ever found him, but also more cowardly than she ever thought possible.

It’s not that she admires Rio for taking matters into his own hands by pulling the trigger himself—if there’s one thing about him that keeps her safely straddling the line between her old life and her new one, it’s how comfortable Rio is putting a gun to people’s faces—but Dean’s decision to hire out for this job, and his choice in hitmen, just shows how far out of his depth he is. Rio's taught her that you must face your problems head-on, deal with them yourself. _If you want to be the king, you have to kill the king_. 

Beth isn't ready to kill anyone, but she is on her way to figuring out how to handle her own rotten eggs.

Beth gets dressed to go take her money back from PJ and Tobin’s place with Annie: she swaps her purple V-neck for a dark turtleneck and covers it with a dark jacket. Her boots click across the wooden floor as she walks to the front door.

“Where are you going?” Beth turns; Dean’s in the front room; she didn’t realize. He stops her with his voice just before she reaches the handle. “You look like a cat burglar.”

“I have to get our money back,” she says. Her voice isn’t as venomous as it was during their altercation yesterday. She’s just tired. Of Dean, of this fight. 

“He’s wrecking our lives,” Dean says again, repeating the same old argument.

“You’re not helping,” Beth says. She can’t think of one thing he’s done to truly help them recently—not for months. Sure, he’s done his duties. He’s fed his children, driven them to T-Ball practices, learned how to style a ballerina bun. But you don’t get a medal just for showing up. That’s just parenting. 

Dean scoffs. “Oh. Okay.” He takes a drink of alcohol. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Beth has no idea what “it” is. There are too many available options, but he’s drunk, so she has no interest in getting into any of them. Plus, she’s on a time crunch.

“The first thing you did was check on your _money_ ,” he spits, his voice brimming with spite.

“I knew the kids were with your mom,” Beth says. She knows that’s not what he meant, but it’s all she cares to offer. 

“That’s not who I’m talking about,” Dean says. She can see the hurt in his eyes, and she wants to wipe the look off his face. She decides it right at that moment: later, she will confront him. She will lay it all out: the affairs, the debt, the fake cancer, the hitmen. Later, she will kick him out. Finally. It’s overdue.

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m working on it.” 

“Why don’t you go to bed?” she suggests, and she walks out the door.

–--

It turns out Annie can’t make it to PJ and Tobin’s: she’s helping Nancy give birth, of all things. Ruby shows up instead. Beth lets her rage simmer and spill over through the whole mission. At first, it goes relatively well, despite this—she gets the party to clear out and convinces the girlfriend that she’s PJ’s mom. In the final moments, though, when they’re holding their bags of money and ready to step out the door, the girlfriend returns, holding a gun and a picture of PJ’s _real_ mom. 

They leave empty-handed.

Beth should be more worked up, but she’s mostly just tired at this point. She feels it in her bones.

As they walk back to their cars, Ruby says, “Say I had tickets to Beyoncé, but I only had two tickets, and both you and Stan wanted to go…”

Beth caves. She can’t stay mad at Ruby, especially because she knows she can’t truly understand Ruby’s position. At first, it had seemed so easy—so black and white. Ruby had picked Stan over Beth, had nearly betrayed everything. But Beth realizes now that the reason she can’t step into Ruby’s shoes to truly know how difficult that decision would be is because she can’t imagine what Ruby feels for Stan, not really.

She’s had twenty years and four kids with Dean, and it was like he’d said: the first thing she'd checked on was her money. Her first visceral reaction to hearing that had been to feel defensive, to feel guilt and shame for some flaw in her character. But she knows it isn’t a flaw. It’s just a reaction to twenty years of being treated as less than—less than his dealership, less than his affairs, less than his equal. 

Ruby’s never felt less than with her husband. She’s always had his confidence, his belief, his love. Beth envies them more than anything else. 

When they reach the cars, Beth says, “I’m going to ask Dean to move out.”

“Wow,” Ruby says. “Does this have anything to do with—?”

Beth shakes her head. “No.” She considers. “Maybe?”

“Oh, _wow,_ ” Ruby says. "I didn't realize..."

“It's not in the way you’re thinking,” Beth says. “I don’t think. I don’t know.”

“B, if that’s the case…” Ruby gives her a sympathetic look. “You gotta have a real conversation with him. The teasing and the mystery and the chase is fun, I _get it_. But you’ll want more than that someday.”

Beth shakes her head. “No, I’m not there yet. I just mean, _yes,_ it has something to do with him—Dean hired hitmen to _kill_ him.”

“ _What_?” Ruby closes her eyes and then reopens them, wide and round with incredulity. 

“He _screamed_ at Jane today for tattooing her neck.” Beth rubs at her own neck while she says it. “Jane met him at Chuck E. Cheese. He was so nice to her. Thoughtful. Patient. So Jane got all these temporary tattoos and just…” Beth gives Ruby a sad smile. “She really likes him. Dean lost his mind.”

Ruby nods, serious and contemplative.

“Rio’s all wrapped up in this. Dean wants him gone, but Rio makes me feel… he makes me feel powerful,” Beth says. “I mean, he also makes me feel weak, but that’s more like… weak in the knees, you know?”

Ruby chuckles, then says, “Can I say something and you won’t get mad?”

Beth nods, and Ruby says gently but firmly, “Don’t let these men make you feel powerful—that gives them the power to take it away.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Beth says. “Not exactly. I guess I mean that he makes me realize that I _have_ power. He helped me see I even wanted it in the first place. So… yeah. It’s because of Rio. But not because I’m necessarily ready to have _that_ conversation with him. It’s just because he makes me ready to fight for myself, I think.”

Ruby holds her arms open for Beth to fall into a hug. 

They part and Ruby wishes Beth good luck—she promises she's here if Beth needs anything at all.

Beth starts her engine, but she’s not ready to go home yet, not ready to face Dean. She wants to push it off until the morning, wants to push it off until she’s awake and alert and when she can be firm and levelheaded. Right now it’s late and she’s _failed_ at fixing what she’d wanted to fix and she has no more energy.

Beth finds herself driving on autopilot. The place is packed. Beth orders a bourbon on the rocks, and it takes three laps around the bar for her to know for sure that he isn’t here. She feels a mix of disappointment and relief. She finds herself drawn to him, wanting to see him, hear his voice, smell his scent—sometimes woody, sometimes just like freshly clean laundry—but she’s also not in the mood to share her screwup regarding PJ and Tobin yet.

Plus, it was like she said: she needs the cooldown periods in between to regroup. Probably now more than ever. It’s not that Dean has been a really significant barrier between them, but she knows it’ll be different somehow once he’s gone. 

Beth orders another drink, anyway. She sits in a corner and pulls out her phone to play a mindless game of Candy Crush. She has a pretty good streak, getting through several levels in a row. A waitress passes by and Beth orders one more, but then she quickly wastes all five of her lives on a level where every piece of chocolate she doesn’t immediately eliminate spreads and poisons the rest of the board. Who know Candy Crush was such a good metaphor for the rotten eggs in her criminal enterprises?

There’s a 20 minute wait period before she gets another life, so Beth closes the app and checks the time. It’s nearly midnight—Dean will probably be asleep soon, and she can safely sneak back into her house without waking him up. She looks up and around the room, half-expecting to see Rio sitting at the bar. Right now it feels like she can’t go anywhere without running into him, so surely she should run into him here, one of the few spaces he’s invited her into.

The bar’s still packed and noisy, so she can’t be positive, but she doesn’t feel his energy in the room. 

She’s well past buzzed. She's thinking about how it’s a good thing she no longer has his phone number because her fingers are itching to call him when her phone vibrates. Her heart lodges in her throat. She doesn't recognize the number. It has to be him. 

“Hello?” she answers, pressing her hand against her other ear to drown out the noise.

Rio says something, but it’s basically indecipherable.

“Hold on!” Beth calls. She starts to weave through the people towards the front door, holding her drink, but the bouncer tells her she can’t take it out with her, she’s going to have to dump it. She paid almost $9 for it, though, and she’s basically broke now, so she turns around and heads to the only other quiet space in a bar: the bathroom. 

_The_ bathroom.

When Beth clicks the lock behind her and sets her drink on the counter, she says, “Sorry about that.”

“Where you at?” Rio asks.

“Uhh,” Beth says. She doesn’t want to tell him that she’s at his bar—it will seem like she went there looking for him, and that’s only half-true, so she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Out.”

“‘Out,’” Rio repeats, teasing her for her coyness.

“Yeah, _out_ ,” Beth says lightly. “See? I can be evasive, too.”

Rio snickers. 

“Why are you calling? _Past_ normal business hours?” 

“Returnin’ the favor,” Rio says. His voice is different, somehow, but Beth can’t put her finger on it. “But it sounds like you’re up and at ‘em, so maybe not. Am I interruptin’ something?”

“No,” Beth says. 

“Okay,” he says, but then says nothing more. 

Beth’s feels the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Rio’s being… strange. She’s seen him cruel, she’s seen him violent, she’s seen him kind and flirty and thoughtful. She’s not sure what this is, though. Beth struggles to come up with something, anything to say. 

“Where are you?” he asks again. Does he _know_? Somehow, he always seems to know.

“Just some bar,” Beth fibs.

“You out with your girls?” he asks. 

“No.” She looks in the mirror and starts adjusting her hair, just for something to do with her hands.

“You out on a date?” he asks.

Beth laughs. “Uh, no,” she says. “Why would you think that?”

“Midnight. Bar,” he says matter-of-factly. “You, having that dumbass husband you got.” He pauses, then says, “You, lookin’ like you do.”

“Oh,” Beth exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding. This thing that they’re toeing, stepping around, avoiding, chasing—it’ll ill-defined, everything and nothing, impossible and yet inevitable… how can he be concerned there are others? He’s all-consuming. “No. I’m, um. Not dating.”

“Oh, you aint, huh?” he asks, like she’s just erased something accidentally. 

She doesn’t want to _protest_ , to be the first one to claim something or name this, so what comes out of her mouth is a bunch of gibberish: “Well—I—I mean—it’s just—that’s not—” She can’t get a hold of herself. She presses her hand to her forehead, tries to focus. She downs the rest of her bourbon. “I mean, I’m not like… going out on dates.” There. That’s perfect. It’s completely true, it addresses the other people—the _nonexistent_ other people—and it doesn’t diminish whatever bubble they exist in. 

“Good. That’s good,” he says. 

“Are… are you?” She clears her throat, thinking about the woman she saw him hugging in that grocery store parking lot. “Dating, I mean.”

“Nah,” Rio says. Beth closes her eyes and lets out a low breath. 

“Is that new?” Beth asks tentatively. She’s wondering when the walls will draw back up and he’ll stop answering questions.

“What?”

“The not dating. Is that new?”

“Sorta,” he says.

“‘Sorta,’” she repeats, trying to understand.

Rio inhales loudly, on the verge of agitation. “Yeah, it's kinda like yes and kinda like no."

“Okay.” Beth's voice is small. The silence stretches between them. Beth’s sure if she can’t come up with something to say, he’s going to hang up. “Why’d you call?”

“Just wanted you to have my new number, mama,” he says, and the irritation has disappeared from his voice. It's a perfectly reasonable explanation, but Beth’s toes curl. 

“Oh. Okay. Well, I have it… so thanks.” 

“Are you drunk?” Rio asks abruptly. 

The tension of their conversation has sobered her somewhat, but she’s buzzed enough to feel somewhat unsteady. “A little.” 

“Me too,” Rio admits. “And I was... thinkin’ about you.”

Beth feels like she’s been doused with water. _What is she supposed to say to that?_ She leans against the wall for some stability.

“Are you alone?” he asks. 

Beth swallows. Her mouth feels dry, and her whole body feels warm and raw, like she’s an exposed nerve. “Yeah,” she admits. “I’m, um, in the bathroom. At Mayor.”

Rio makes a guttural, involuntary noise, and oh _god,_ it sends a shiver down Beth’s spine. 

“Door’s locked?” he asks.

“...Yes.” Beth’s feels her brain go hazy.

“You wearin’ a dress?” Rio asks.

“Jeans,” Beth says. “Same as earlier.”

“That works, too,” Rio almost sighs the words. 

“Works for what?”

“Are you thinking about it?” Rio says, voice husky.

“Yes,” Beth confesses. She is. She’s staring at herself in the mirror and remembering what it felt like to watch Rio move against her, his face buried in her hair. She lets out flustered exhale. 

“Are you—” She hears him gulp, she thinks. “Are you touchin’ yourself?”

“No.” She feels her cheeks burn. 

Rio’s voice is throaty and thick. “Would you?”

“Okay,” Beth says, and she unclips the button on her jeans and slowly unzips her fly and wiggles her pants down just enough to slip her hand over her underwear. She runs her finger up and down the thin piece of fabric, teasing herself gently. She makes a quiet noise of contentment, and she hears Rio sigh. She asks, “Are you—?” 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Wanna be there in that bathroom with you, though.”

Beth’s underwear— _panties,_ she thinks, half-grinning—are damp beneath her hand.

“I wanna—I wanna watch you next time,” Rio says. “I wanna watch you squirm and see your face when—when I make you come.”

Beth slips her hand beneath the fabric. “You’re making me so wet,” she whispers. She starts touching her clit, softly, softly. 

“Fuck,” Rio says, stretching out the word. “Elizabeth.”

“Rio,” she gasps. She almost never says his name—basically never says it directly to him, and it feels strange on her tongue in the best way. She imagines moaning his name into his ear as he moves above her, feeling his body against hers, tasting his sweat as she runs her tongue along the dip in his collarbone. 

“I want you—up against that wall. I wanna—I wanna feel your legs wrapped around me. You—felt—so—good—mami.” His breathing is ragged and he’s having a harder time getting the words out.

Beth can feel it building, the tension threatening to snap. Her slightest touch is electric. She increases her pressure and speed.

“Next time…” Beth murmurs. “I’m going to kiss you.”

“Next time?” Rio’s breath hitches.

“Yeah,” Beth says brazenly, because she knows there will be a next time. “Next time.”

“Tell me what you’re doin’ to yourself,” Rio demands.

“I’m watching myself in the mirror,” Beth says slowly, teasingly.

“Jesus, fuck, Beth—” Rio says, using her name for once. “That’s so fucking—”

“I’m imagining it’s your hand,” Beth says.

Rio grunts. “Keep talkin’.”

“I miss the feel of your hands on me,” Beth says. “You left bite marks on my shoulders, you know.”

“I know,” he gives a cocky laugh.

“I—touched myself thinking about you. A lot,” Beth tells him. She almost hesitates to say it, but she remembers the crow bar and thinks about that laugh that just bubbled out of him, so she thinks it will please him to know— “Dean almost walked in on me when I was doing it.”

The noise that erupts out of Rio is otherworldly and divine. “Do you know you’re driving me insane?”

“I’m close,” Beth moans. 

They’re silent for a stretch, no words, only the noises of their pleasure, which are becoming louder, faster, less controlled. 

“Come for me,” Beth urges. “I want to hear you. Please.”

“So polite,” Rio tries to joke, but she can tell it’s basically through gritted teeth. 

Beth moans, deep and long—she’s so close, as long as she keeps matching this speed and pressure, she knows she’s under a minute away. The sounds she’s making are enough to push Rio over the edge, though, and then he starts coaxing her with the smoothness of his voice. Beth stops breathing, and her orgasm rolls over her. Her ears start ringing, it’s that good.

Rio lets out a long, satisfied sigh. Beth walks over to the sink and starts washing her hands and cleaning herself up. The phone is cupped between her shoulder and her ear, but neither of them says anything. She just had _phone sex._ She’s still buzzing, and not just from the physical pleasure. 

“Well,” Beth says. Her body feels lighter. Some of the tension she’d been holding has melted away. She doesn’t know what there is left to say; she’s just content, not so chatty. 

“Well,” Rio matches.

“Thank you,” she says.

Rio laughs quietly. “So polite.”

Beth smiles in embarrassment, not that he can see it.

“You good to get home safe?” he asks.

“Yes,” Beth says. “I’ll Uber.”

“Good.” He pauses. “Drop schedule starts back up tomorrow. G’night, Elizabeth.”

Beth feels like she’s floating on air when she walks out of the bathroom, but she's startled to find three very disgruntled women who have been waiting in line. 

“Sorry,” Beth apologizes, abashed.

“Jesus, lady,” the first one in line sneers. “We knocked, like, a hundred times.” Funny. Beth hadn't heard a thing.

Beth gives a weak, awkward smile and makes a beeline for the exit. The crispness of the middle-of-the-night-air feels great on her skin, which is lightly sheened in sweat. She nearly falls asleep on the ride home, but she makes it, just barely. 

As soon as she walks into the house, she can feel it. There’s no evidence, not really, not yet, but she _knows_. The apprehension and anxiety squelches the last of her drunkenness. Dread fills her limbs like lead as she climbs the stairs.

The kids’ bedrooms are empty.

Dean’s left a note on the fridge:

_Beth,_

_I think you need some time to figure out your priorities. The kids are safe with_ _me until you do. I hope you think long and hard about how this obsession is hurting your family. Call me when you come to your senses._

_D._

**Author's Note:**

> Rio will never explain it himself, being Rio, so I want to just for the reader.
> 
> When Beth asks if he's seeing anyone and he says no, he gets all cagey about how that's "sorta" new not because he's in his feelings about another woman or anything like that, but because the question reminds him that it's lonely at the top, that he hasn't really been able to date or pursue relationships in any real way because of the life he lives. 
> 
> I headcanon that Rio probably has had a revolving string of casual relationships for a long time, but that he hasn't let anyone get too close. I imagine he was seeing other women in this capacity until fairly recently—probably until just after he retrieved the dubby for Beth, so it's "new" that he stopped seeing these women, but it's been years since any of them have really mattered in any significant way. 
> 
> He was highly amused when he overheard Annie, Ruby, and Beth talking about their hookup, but I think it probably also signaled something to him that Beth had shared this piece of information with them when he knows that Beth is pretty private, too. He's still just as uncertain as Beth is that they could be anything, and he doesn't like to be reminded about it.


End file.
